Abrazo

Abrazo. Embrace. A close dance perhaps, but also with the hint of a friendly tussle. Could there be a more fitting metaphor for the duo of accordionist Vincent Peirani and soprano saxophonist Émile Parisien? "It's like a marriage," says Peirani. "In the beginning everything’s just great, wonderful, paradise. But of course, after a while, it also becomes challenging, which is quite normal. "Right now, we're just massively happy playing together." There can be very few musicians who have got to know each other as well as Peirani and Parisien have. They have clocked up well over 1000 concerts together in the past decade, of which more than 600 have been as a duo. They first met in 2012 as members of drummer Daniel Humair’s quartet, and their very first appearance as a duo was an impromptu late-night club set while touring in Korea. "Une ca-ta-strophe! An unmitigated disaster".

Eliades Ochoa, the Cuban singer, songwriter and guitarist well known as one of the original members of Buena Vista Social Club, returns with his brand new album 'Guajiro', a collection of beautiful and melodic songs that cements his reputation as one of the most important artists to come out of Cuba in the last century. Featuring guest artists Rubén Blades, Joan As Police Woman and Charlie Musselwhite.

The focus of Zsófia Boros’s third recording for ECM’s New Series is split two-ways, with one spotlight turned towards contemporary compositions from Argentina and the other on the multiple-idioms spanning music of French composer Mathias Duplessy. Fanfare magazine has spoken of the Vienna-based Hungarian guitarist in glowing terms, noting her “clear, beautiful tone, liquid phrasing, precise layering of melody and accompaniment, fluid figuration and her emphatic sense of mood and emotion” – all qualities that are especially apparent on El último aliento.

The Nerve Institute is the current incarnation of a one-man project that's been active in some form for nearly a decade now. Architects of Flesh-Density (2011). This is the first official Nerve Institute album although M. Judge (who is Nerve Institute) has released other albums under different names. He wrote, played, produced, etc. just about everything on this album himself, with maybe a little bit of help here and there. The music is generally hard to describe as there is so much going on in every song. The use of many different instruments makes for a full sound. The guitars and drums are sometimes very jazzy. Sometimes the guitars are more metal sounding and electric pianos are used often…